All of the sudden, all the cars on the road swerved to the side with brakes locked.  The first time it happened, I had no idea what was going on and kept driving our tiny Maruti car up the road.  A truck roared up packed with military, frantically waving us off the road.  I parked just in time for a purple Toyota Landcruiser to roar by with more guards behind.  It was a member of the Bhutanese Royal Family.  In this mountain kingdom, Landcruisers are the royal car of choice and the royals have special license plates that read “Bhutan 1″ for the king and then the numbers grow higher as the rank in the royal family recedes.

In fact, the only time we ever saw the former king, Jigme Singye Wangchuk, was on the windy mountain pass between Thimphu and Punakha.  We were on a blind corner when suddenly [Read more →]

(Continued from Part One)

The village of Buli was a combination of stone-age looking houses made of rock and mud, and new wooden shops decorated with Britney Spears and Janet Jackson posters. We headed straight into the old village to visit Buli Gonpa, a temple established in 1478 by the great treasure hunter, Pema Lingpa.

Just then, the mayor of Buli approached with a smile and slyly asked “Would you like to see a great treasure?” We eagerly followed him to his house where he opened a polished wooden box and pulled out an old frying pan. He explained that this plain pan belonged to Lingpa and we could still see his thumbprint pressed into the metal.

The mayor asked a man to show us Menmo Lake, a spiritual site nearby. We walked out of Buli past rows of flowing prayer flags and through a green valley of terraced rice fields. At the edge of each field sat a small tower. “What are the towers for?” I asked. The man replied “During the winter we use them to dry grass, but during the harvest someone sits in them to watch for tigers coming out of the forest.” [Read more →]

Tanzania and East Africa are known to have great bird watching and we plan to learn the birds while living here. In addition to the local species, Tanzania lies on the migration routes of many northern bird species so there are both the endemic species and the visitors. We’ve seen about ten species just in the hotel compound, though we don’t know the names since our bird book has yet to arrive.

We saw a small bird that looks like a black-headed Bulbul. Another little bird looked like a Finch but was only as big as a finger. Every night at dusk, dozens of giant fruit bats fly over the hotel like some sort of vampire fantasy.

Andrea spotted this amazing bird colony on our walk to breakfast. It’s a big cluster of nests in one big tree. There are probably 100 nests and the bright yellow/black birds enter the nests from a hole in the bottom. The nests look like a round water vase turned upside down.

Are these Orioles? Can anyone help us identify what kind of birds these are and why they nest upside down? Please comment below if you know.

Bird Nest Cluster in Morogoro, Tanzania

As I sat here working on my laptop, I was deep in northern Mongolia imagining wolves loping out the forest as hunters hid in the light snow before. The hunter had just drawn a bead on the wolf when suddenly a monkey ran by the window in the African sun.

“Weird” I thought. When I write, I try to totally immerse myself in the story and lose my immediate surroundings. Some days I’ll spend the morning climbing a mountain in the Himalayas and then walk out in the warmth of the Colorado sunshine and feel in total culture shock. Today was like that. As I sat writing and breathing in Mongolia, suddenly Africa pulled me back when a cute little monkey ran by the window.

He had a gray back, a black face, white belly and long this tail. I grabbed my camera, put on a telephoto lens and ran outside. The little monkey ran at the sight of me but I followed him into the trees where first he hid but then started baring his big fangs when I photographed him with the flash on.

I have to admit, the cute little monkey didn’t seem so cute and harmless once he started displaying his giant sharp teeth. I imagined him jumping straight from the tree onto my head. This is when I realized that I really know nothing about the animals of Africa.

Maybe someone can help me identify this monkey. Does anyone know the species?

Big toothed monkey in Morogoro. What kind is it?

All text and Photos Copyright Nathan Ward – No reprint without permission.

This is a multi-part story about a trip Andrea and I took to the eastern part of Bhutan. It takes six days of driving non-stop to get there and back, but we only went a few hundred miles because the roads are so thin and curvy. This story originally appeared in Lifestyle and Travel Magazine. Read on to learn all about it.

Beyond the World’s Last Corner - Flying Tigers, Wise Monks and Hairy Yetis, Nathan Ward explores the Hinterlands of the Last Himalayan Kingdom

A wrinkled brown hand pushes a wooden bowl toward me, a bowl filled with sweet saffron rice, a Himalayan delicacy. Using my fingers, I scoop the golden rice into my mouth and wash it down with a sip of thick butter tea. The host’s dark eyes crinkle with a smile as she hands me another drink, this one clear like a mountain stream but filled with the power of fire, laughter and warmth. I toss back the tangy rice wine and look at the demons dancing below me.

Two masked demons twist and spin their bright robes into fluid spheres of shimmering color, their wooden faces frozen in grimace and fear. Frantically, drum beats fill the air and fierce-faced warriors stream from the corners of the ancient palace, surrounding the demons. The warriors beat the drums with a roar that ebbs and flows as they chase the evil spirits back to the underworld.

Sacred Mask Dances at the Phobjika Valley Monastery

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